FBI Special Agent Laurel Snow imagined the pre-Christmas period quite differently, but when traces of a serial killer's rampage are found in the mountains outside her hometown in Washington state, she decides to go to the crime scene and begin the search.
A peculiar young woman with an exceptional memory, who left home as a child prodigy at the age of eleven to go to university, uses her knowledge of psychology to try to get into the mindset of a rapist who hides among the orderly citizens of a mountain town. Her search is complicated not only by the harsh winter weather, but also by the shadows of her own past and the uncontrollable attraction she feels for Huck Rivers, a former soldier and ranger who has become her partner in the investigation against his will.